Capitalism was not working well before Covid. It is a system with unique capacities to build cohesive societies capable of surmounting problems, but the sort of capitalism that we have encouraged during the past four decades has done the opposite. Given the unprecedented scale of the current shock, will coronavirus accentuate these failings, or trigger remedies?
At its best, capitalism generates “adaptive communities”, a simple-sounding phrase that packs a lot of meaning and is key to how we will get through the current crisis.
We have evolved to belong to community. Humans are a distinctively pro-social mammal: we want to be part of a group and to win the good opinion of its other members. Small communities happen naturally, but large ones have to be organised. Rousseau was the first philosopher to see the advantage of cooperating at scale in a community: hunting solo we could only catch rabbits, whereas hunting together we can catch stags.
Successful businesses and public bureaucracies do not just rely on formal hierarchy, they build themselves into communities that achieve a purpose. Similarly, successful cities, regions and countries rise beyond just being places where a random collection of individuals happen to live, to being purposive communities. So how does a community become capable of acting together for some shared goal?
The surest way is through dialogue and trusted leadership. Dialogue is a particular form of communication, and usually takes the form of narrative: the style that all of us have evolved to master. It engages everyone, so that all members of the community can participate and co-own the outcome. It flows back and forth between equals who aim to understand each other, in contrast to instructions flowing down a hierarchy. And it presumes mutual regard between participants, not indifference or worse.
Dialogues tend to build a common understanding of a situation, a common sense of identity that can co-exist with our other identities. But above all, they can create a sense of common obligation that encourages us to put these collective purposes ahead of our own individual interests.
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